The Zetetic system still lives in lectures and books; as it ought to do, for there is no way of teaching a truth comparable to opposition. The last I heard of it was in lectures at Plymouth, in October, 1864. Since this time a prospectus has been issued of a work entitled "The Earth not a Globe"; but whether it has been published I do not know. The contents are as follows: "The Earth a Plane--How circumnavigated.--How time is lost or gained.--Why a ship's hull disappears (when outward bound) before the mast head.--Why the Polar Star sets when we proceed Southward, etc.--Why a pendulum vibrates with less velocity at the Equator than {90} at the Pole.--The allowance for rotundity _supposed_ to be made by surveyors, not made in practice.--Measurement of Arcs of the Meridian unsatisfactory.--Degrees of Longitude North and South of the Equator considered.--Eclipses and Earth's form considered.--The Earth no motion on axis or in orbit.--How the Sun moves above the Earth's surface concentric with the North Pole.--Cause of Day and Night, Winter and Summer; the long alternation of light and darkness at the Pole.--Cause of the Sun rising and setting.--Distance of the Sun from London, 4,028 miles--How measured.--_Challenge to Mathematicians._--Cause of Tides.--Moon self-luminous, NOT a reflector.--Cause of Solar and Lunar eclipses.--Stars _not worlds_; their distance.--Earth, the _only material_ world; its true position in the universe; its condition and ultimate destruction by fire (2 Peter iii.), etc." I wish there were geoplatylogical lectures in every town; in England (_platylogical_, in composition, need not mean _babbling_). The late Mr. Henry Archer[185] would, if alive, be very much obliged to me for recording his vehement denial of the roundness of the earth: he was excited if he heard any one call it a globe. I cannot produce his proof from the Pyramids, and from some caves in Arabia. He had other curious notions, of course: I should no more believe that a flat earth was a man's only paradox, than I should that Dutens,[186] the editor of Leibnitz, was eccentric only in supplying a tooth which he had lost by one which he found in an Italian tomb, and fully believed that it had once belonged to Scipio Africanus, whose family vault was discovered, it is supposed, in 1780. Mr. Archer is of note as {91} the suggester of the perforated border of the postage-stamps, and, I think, of the way of doing it; for this he got 4000l. reward. He was a civil engineer.